in zoology. See MUSTELA.

a voracity of appetite, or a propensity to gormandizing.

There is a morbid sort of gluttony, called fames canina, "dog-like appetite," which sometimes occurs, and renders the person seized with it an object of pity and of cure as in other diseases: (see BULIMY.) But professed habitual gluttons may be reckoned amongst the monsters of nature, and deemed in a manner punishable for endeavouring to bring a dearth or famine into the places where they live. For which reason, people think king James I. was in the right, when a man being presented to him that could eat a whole sheep at one meal, he asked "What he could do more than another man?" and being answered "He could not do so much," said, "Hang him then; for it is unfit a man should live that eats so much as twenty men, and cannot do so much as one."

The emperor Clodius Albinus would devour more apples at once than a bushel would hold. He would eat 500 figs to his breakfast, 100 peaches, 10 melons, 20 pound weight of grapes, 100 gnat-snappers, and 400 oysters. "Fye upon him (faith Lupius); God keep such a curse from the earth."

One of our Danish kings named Hardiknute was so great a glutton, that a historian calls him Bacca de Porco, "Swine's-mouth." His tables were covered four times a day with the most costly viands that either the air, sea, or land, could furnish: and as he lived he died; for, revelling and carousing at a wedding-banquet at Lambeth, he fell down dead. His death was so welcome to his subjects, that they celebrated the day with sports and pastimes, calling it Hock-tide, which signifies scorn and contempt. With this king ended the reign of the Danes in England.

One Phagon, under the reign of the emperor Aurelianus, at one meal, eat a whole boar, 100 loaves of bread, a sheep, a pig, and drank above three gallons of wine.

We are told by Fuller *, that one Nicholas Wood, * Worthies of Harrifon in Kent, eat a whole sheep of 16 s. price p. 86, at one meal, raw; at another time, 30 dozen of pigeons.

At Sir William Sidney's, in the same county, he eat as much victuals as would have sufficed 30 men. At Lord Wotton's mansion-house in Kent, he devoured at one dinner 84 rabbits; which, by computation, at half a rabbit a man, would have served 168 men. He eat to his breakfast 18 yards of black pudding. He devoured a whole hog at one sitting down; and after it, being accommodated with fruit, he eat three pecks of damoins.

A counsellor at law, whose name was Mallet, well known in the reign of Charles I. eat at one time an ordinary provided in Westminster for 30 men at twelve-pence a piece. His practice not being sufficient to supply him with better sort of meat, he fed generally on offals, ox-livers, hearts, &c. He lived to almost 60 years of age, and for the seven last years of his life eat as moderately as other men. A narrative of his Life was published.